This gallery, a suggestion from some of my visitors during the recent Anime-Beta Open House, is designed to be a pleasant way to get acquainted with the parts of my collection devoted to Cardcaptor Sakura, the classic 1998-2000 cel-based anime series from Madhouse. This was the first anime that really engaged me as a viewer, and so when I began collecting it was the primary focus of my collecting for many years. Happily, these were also years when some very high-end items were coming onto the market. Good cels from this series have always attracted fierce bidwars, but over time I’ve been fortunate.

Most anime fans know CCS as an important “magical girl” series, the story of a typical grade-school girl who finds she has a hidden talent for magic. But Sakura is not the typical squee-and-shriek little girl: she also has a surprising amount of courage and determination, and so she is genuinely admirable as a hero. The cast of characters, too, is diverse, allowing for a surprisingly far-ranging exploration of what “love” can mean in addition to the stereotypical “search for a mate.” And the visual look of the series, thanks to character designer/chief animation director Kumiko Takahashi, is colorful, inventive, and often surprisingly complex. In addition to cels, I’ve watched for sketch art that gives insight into the hard work that makes the action scenes smooth and realistic.

In choosing 24 “gems,” I’ve kept a number of things in mind. First of all, I’ve picked items that are genuinely beautiful and significant in their original contexts. Second, I’ve made sure that all of my subsections dealing with CCS are represented. You can follow the links included in the descriptions and explore topics that interest you more fully. Finally, I’ve called out many selections that are not as visited as others (according to RS’s “top 50” list of most visited pages), so that even those who have dipped into my CCS galleries before can find one or two surprises that they might have missed.